Budget Resolutions

Debate between Jim McMahon and Jeremy Hunt

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s concern. That standard was introduced when I was Health Secretary. This could have been the Budget in which the Chancellor announced we would speed up treatment for people with mental illness and not park them on welfare. This could have been the Budget that said that we will eliminate fraud by stopping completely benefit applications by phone. It could have been the Budget that said that instead of relying on migration to help firms expand, we will make sure that people at home are fit to join the workforce. Instead, the welfare bill is going up by around £14 billion, not least because of the totally unfair abolition of the two-child cap, which I fear will see more children, not fewer, living in the structural poverty caused when there are no adults in the household at work.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given his background, the right hon. Gentleman must surely recognise that there is a direct link between social policy and economic policy—that this country needs a working-age population to fund future pensions and welfare bills for generations in the future. How on earth can you do that if you are not encouraging children to be brought up and raised in a household that can afford to feed them?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

I think she brought me to order at just the right time!

[Sir Jeremy Hunt]

I recognise that the hon. Gentleman’s concern about child poverty is sincere; I just have a totally different view as to how to reduce child poverty in this country. I think financing people to have ever larger families will mean more children growing up in poverty, not fewer. The evidence for that is that under the previous Conservative Government, we had a million fewer children growing up in workless households, and child poverty in absolute terms fell. The hon. Gentleman needs to look at that evidence.

The price we are paying for this mushrooming welfare bill is rising taxes which are already starting to destroy growth: 180,000 fewer payroll jobs in the last year; unemployment up, inflation up and interest rates higher than they would have been. The tragedy is that absolute poverty—which, as I said, fell under the previous Conservative Government—is now likely to rise under Labour as jobs vanish and welfare rolls soar.